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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ? 

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|. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. | 



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6 6 Owe no man anything." 



A 

SERMON 

PREACHED AT THE UNION STREET CHURCH 
November Sth, 1839, 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 



PRINTED BY EDWARDS & SMITH, 

West Market Place. 



SERMON. 



ROMANS, XIII— 6. 

" Owe no man anything but to love one another*^ 



This injunction may be thought to require an impossi- 
bility. It is one which circumstances render it often 
exceedingly difficult to comply with. A general and 
long continued indulgence in the opposite practice, — a 
habit, on all hands, of resorting to credit for the satis- 
faction of some real or imaginary want, where immediate 
payment is not convenient, may occasion such a state of 
things as shall render it difficult, if not impossible, for 
the individual, sharing as the individual must, in the 
general embarrassment — to act upon this precept, how- 
ever his own inclinations might dispose him to do so. In 
order that the individual may act upon it, he must re- 
ceive like measure from others. In most cases, he can 
deal in such matters only as he himself is dealt with. 

The present is a period when, through long violations 
of this duty, in time past, its observance has been ren- 
dered, in many instances, impracticable, in reference to 
past obligations, and few among us, in these years, can 
boast an exemption from pecuniary burdens beyond their 
power to discharge. None the less, but the rather on this 
account, is the precept in question, to be urged and in- 
sisted on, as the only means of disentanglement from 



4 



these difficulties, and the only defence against similar 
involvements in time to come. 

" Owe no man anything" — We have in this injunc- 
tion, a striking example of the strict harmony which 
exists between the moral law and the laws which resru- 
late success in affairs. To owe no man any thing, is not 
less the dictate of sound policy, in relation to ourselves, 
than it is of simple justice, in relation to others. And 
here, as in all other cases, the Christian rule, so far 
from interfering with worldly prosperity, is precisely the 
one best adapted to promote it. 

The advantage which business derives from obedience 
to this rule, is that of security over chance, according to 
the obvious and well-approved maxim, that a moderate 
certainty is better than a large expectation, and a reason- 
able profit that lies close at hand and may be depended 
on, more desirable than a very extravagant one that is 
somewhat problematical. In a season of unbroken 
prosperity and unquestioned credit, bold adventures 
based on expectation, may yield the largest apparent 
returns, but these returns like the source from which 
they spring, are often imaginary, and vanish into air, 
when the prosperous season, shortened by such adven- 
tures, gives place to seasons of perplexity and failure. 
So that, taking one period with another, through a long 
series of years, it will be found that the safe policy which 
builds on actual possession, and proceeds no farther and 
no faster than it can find support in present and availa- 
ble means, is the niost successful. In life as in nature, 
all great and permanent results are the fruit of slow and 
silent accumulations. Whoever will investigate the his- 
tory of private fortunes in any community, will find that 
where one man has become rich by speculation, ten have 
become so by exact economy and patient thrift. 
But whatever may be the effect of punctuality in these 



5 



matters on worldly thrift, no one can doubt the beneficial 
influence of this virtue on personal comfort, to which 
nothing is more essential than regularity in all the ar- 
rangements and relations of life. To live comfortably 
it is necessary to live compactly. We may extend as 
widely as we please our thoughts, our imaginations, our 
sympathies, and not only suffer no inconvenience, but 
derive great accession of comfort from such extension. 
But we cannot contract within too narrow limits our prac- 
tical liabilities, or square too exactly our accounts with 
the world. These pecuniary obligations are so many 
nerves and morbid sensibilities, which the farther we ex- 
tend, the more liable we are to lesion from abroad. A 
man who embarrasses himself with debts, is like one 
with a lacerated skin, exposed, at every point, to galling 
collision with a hostile environment. He has as many 
sources of irritation as he has liabilities. Every debt is 
a point of painful contact between him and the world — 
an open sore, detracting so much from the soundness of 
his condition and the comfort of life. No one who has 
experienced the discomfort arising from this species of 
contact, will pronounce it a desirable condition. Every 
one must value a whole skin, however, by rashness or im- 
prudence, he may have failed to preserve his own intact. 

To the motive of personal comfort may be added, as 
another inducement to comply with the precept of the 
text, the more powerful motive of self respect. The re- 
lation of the debtor to the creditor, involves a depen- 
dence which cannot be otherwise than painful to one 
who values as he ought, his personal liberty. Whatever 
rights the law may prescribe or deny to the latter, every 
ingenuous mind will feel this relation to be one of bond- 
age. To owe no man anything, is the natural wish of 
such a mind, which it sometimes carries to excess, with 
savage independence disdaining every obligation by 



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which it may become indebted, even to the voluntary 
service or the good will of any. There is a limit beyond 
which this feeling should not pass. There are obliga- 
tions which we cannot avoid. However we may exult 
in a fancied independence of our fellowmen, we owe to 
them more than we can well repay. We owe to them 
our position in society, which we hold by their permis- 
sion. We owe to them the protection of their laws, — 
the aids to improvement, the stores of knowledge and 
of thought which have grown together from the gradual 
accumulation of all the Past, — every thing, in short, where- 
by civilized, Christian man, in this late time, is distin- 
guished and blest above the naked son of the forest who 
succeeds to no other inheritance than the common air 
and skies. For a being thus accommodated and endow- 
ed, to speak of independence and to boast himself free 
from obligations to his kind, is to incur the just reproach 
of ingratitude and pride. Whatever he may think, the 
individual is a debtor to his kind, for the larger portion 
of all that he possesses, or can by any possibility acquire. 
A compound and accumulated debt has devolved upon 
his head — a debt, of which the interest is all, that with 
livelong effort, he can hope to discharge, — a debt con- 
tracted, in part, before he saw the light, multiplied by 
all the years of childish imbecility and childish obliga- 
tions, and crowned by large draughts on years to come. 
The Past, Present and Future are his creditors, and ail 
that is in him shall barely suffice to satisfy their just de- 
mands. To ignore this debt is no part of honorable 
pride. The true honour consists in accepting it thank- 
fully, and the true independence consists in meeting it 
manfully, with resolute efforts to cancel so much of it, as 
a life of useful labor may avail to discharge. 

Wherefore, the rather, seeing we are thus burdened, 
and in order, the more effectually, to discharge this prior 



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obligation, which Nature and life have imposed upon 
each, let each endeavour to keep himself free from 
special obligations to individual creditors, which may 
hamper his activity, abridge his usefulness and increase 
his dependence. The debt of which I speak is an in- 
voluntary obligation, to which the most scrupulous as 
well as the most thoughtless, the most honorable as well 
as the meanest must needs submit. But no scrupulous 
person will voluntarily incur a debt to which he is not im- 
pelled by a present necessity, and no honorable person 
will desire to receive a benefit for which he has no equiva- 
lent to offer, in anything he has yet realized by his own 
efforts and worth. 

If, as we have seen, a regard to ourselves, — if personal 
comfort and self respect demand our observance of the 
precept in question, — still more is it required of us by 
a regard for our fellowmen, that we owe no man, if 
possible, anything but love. Not every debt which we 
incur is a crime against our fellowmen, but every un- 
necessary debt, which a man assumes without any visible 
and certain means of discharging, is an act of injustice 
to others, more or less criminal, according to the circum- 
stances of the ca.se and the views of the individual, — 
who is chargeable with blameworthy thoughtlessness, if 
K he has failed to consider his ability, and with down* 
right fraud, if, having considered his ability-— he is not 
sure that he possesses or can ever possess the where- 
withal to satisfy the liability he has incurred. But who 
can be sure of anything in which contingencies are in- 
volved ? Who can be sure of the future, or say with 
certainty, that coming years shall fulfil the conditions on 
which his expectations are based 1 Above all, who can 
be sure that the first and great condition, his mortal life, 
which a blast may extinguish, shall be spared to his 
wish, till all that he designed has been accomplished 1 



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What just and conscientious person can think caimly of 
quitting a world which, however unintentionally, he has 
robbed of its dues, and which will press with unsatisfied 
claims upon his dishonoured dust. How sad to think of 
going down to the grave, not only without having dis- 
charged that original and unavoidable debt which every 
human being owes to his kind, hut burdened, in addition, 
with new and needless obligations, incurred for the pur- 
pose of gratifying a foolish fancy or a mad ambition. 

I speak of needless obligations, and how large a pro- 
portion of our pecuniary obligations will be found, on 
examination, to be of this description. Herein consists 
the danger of the practice I am condemning, that it 
tends to create imaginary wants, and to beget a heed- 
lessness with regard to pecuniary liabilities, which is no 
less inconsistent with strict integrity, than it is with 
worldly wisdom. The facility which credit affords, of 
satisfying such wants without an immediate equivalent, 
by removing to an indefinite distance the day of account, 
makes the cost seem less considerable than it really is. 
The ratio between the outlay and the income is not ob- 
served so nicely and cannot be observed so nicely, as 
where a present want is to be met with a present pay- 
ment, and those whom necessity would otherwise com- 
pel to moderate their desires, are betrayed unwittingly 
into extravagances which exceed their intentions as far 
almost, as their means. 

What has now been said, suggests the most practical, 
and indeed the oniy practical method by which the apos- 
tolic precept of this discourse can be fulfilled. The 
rule of Christian duty, as of worldly thrift, is that each 
one live within his means. It is not always easy for 
men of business, and for those whose income is fluc- 
tuating and precarious, to ascertain with precision, what 
is the exact amount of means within their command, or 



9 



within their just expectation. The safer course, there- 
fore, if practicable, would be to abstain from every un- 
necessary expenditure, for which the individual cannot 
offer, not merely a nominal equivalent, but an actual and 
unquestioned value. In a period like the present, — 
when the medium of commercial transactions, for a num- 
ber of years, has been a currency based chiefly on credit, 
and probably far exceeding the present capital and avail- 
able resources of the nation, — *he property acquired by 
such means, has a merely nominal, and to a great extent, 
fictitious value ; and many a one has supposed himself 
to have grown rich, who, — ^whatever his relative condi- 
tion, is no richer in point of real value than before. No 
wonder that so believing, he should indulge a style of 
living which corresponds rather with his supposed wealth 
than his real poverty. To descend from these lofty 
imaginations and meet the actual conditions of the 
case, to stoop from splendour and large indulgence to 
shifts and straits, to come out from the fat years of our 
abundance into the leanness of these ill favoured times, 
is a painful process with all who depend, (and who of us 
does not depend 1) on externals for our enjoyment. It 
is like a strain of music abruptly stopped, or a tale that 
is told. And yet, to one who considers these things in 
the spirit of that wisdom to which all things external 
and foreign from the soul, beyond the necessities and 
simplest satisfactions of our animal nature, are phenom^ 
enal merely, what is it to pass from high estate to low 
estate, from splendour to plainness and from plainness 
to splendour, but just to change the slide in the magic 
lantern of life ; or to pass from picture to picture in a 
gallery of paintings, where each picture has its own 
peculiar value, and where the subject imports not, but 
the manner in which it is presented, and the meaning it 
conveys to thoughtful minds ? To the soul, seated as 



10 



spectator hi its quiet nook, all outward experience is like 
the acts in a play, and whether the scene shifts from the 
palace to the cottage or from the cottage to the palace, 
and whether they be princes or beggars that figure there, 
the same life, the same moral, and if we will, the same 
interest runs through all the parts and acts till 

"The last scene of all 
" That ends this strange eventful history," 

If you should dream of some rich gift that had been 
placed in your possession, and should awake and find it 
gone, you would not think of grieving for the loss, but 
would say, it was only a dream. Why not say the same 
of the gifts enjoyed in your waking hours, when snatch^ 
ed from your possession ? Why not say of these too, it 
was a dream ? Longer indeed, and more vivid than many 
others, but the difference consists only in degree — it was 
still but a dream. The Past is, in fact, nothing more. 
Consider these changes as teachers and prophets or- 
dained to teach anew, the doctrine of the soul, which is 
ever the same from age to age : that they who possess 
be as though they possessed not, knowing that the fash- 
ion of this world is constantly passing away. 

66 If you look," says Bishop Taylor, " on the so much 
esteemed greatness of this world,— ^-the brave palaces, 
renowned cities, large kingdoms, — you may compare 
them to those little houses of sand or dirt, made by chil- 
dren for their entertainment, which men stand by and 
laugh at, and oftentimes, if their parents or masters find 
that it hinders them from learning their lessons, they 
strike them down with their feet, and destroy that in a 
moment which hath cost the children much time and 
labour. So God useth to deal with those who, neglect- 
ing his service, employ themselves in scraping together, 
riches, enlarging their possessions, building of palaces, 
which he destroys as if they were little houses of dirt, 



11 



inade by children. And certainly more children are they 
who set their hearts on the greatness of this short life 2 
than those who busy themselves in walls of dirt." 

To bring our wants within our means, is no difficult 
task to those who have learned to distinguish between 
wants that are real and those that are imaginary. To 
live costs so little, that slenderer means than have fallen 
to the lot of most, would be sufficient to maintain us, did 
not each one carry with him* in his appetites and fancies, 
an expensive suite of retainers who also expect to be 
maintained, crying always. Give ! Give ! and never 
thinking it is enough. The claims of hunger are soon 
satisfied, but the gratification of the palate is an endless 
tax. What a vast array of means and contrivances, — ■ 
what extent of commerce by sea and land, is called into 
requisition, to pamper this small portion of flesh. For 
the sustentation of Nature the products of one soil would 
abundantly suffice, but all soils and climes must contri- 
bute to feed the palate, and the circle of daily meals is 
not complete, till the ends of the earth have supplied the 
board. Yet is the tribute paid to the palate, insignificant 
compared with the tax imposed by Vanity, — the most 
expensive and exacting of all our retainers ; which, ex- 
pensive as it is, few of us have courage to dismiss. Men 
are cheaply lodged and clothed, when comfort and de- 
cency provide the means and prescribe the cost. But we 
are not content to live as our own wants require 3 or even 
as our own fancy suggests, but we must live as others 
use and please. Calculate what would be the cost of 
your establishment, if no one but yourself were to become 
acquainted with its arrangements. All that you have 
expended upon it, over and above that, is a voluntary tax 
which you pay to your fellowmen. In that new and 
splendid attire which you have prepared with so much 
care and cost, you have consulted not so much your own 



12 



convenience, as others' eyes. Confess that a hundredth 
part of the sum it has cost you, would be quite adequate 
to all purposes of personal comfort, and that the remain- 
ing ninety-nine would be useless, if the community in 
which you live, were suddenly to become blind. Ninety 
nine parts, then, of all you expend on your person, are a 
tribute to others, and only a hundredth belongs to your- 
self. Doubtless, the eye should be consulted, and some 
regard should be had to principles of beauty, and the 
gratifications of taste, in the arrangements of life. Nor 
is luxury a crime when, after deducting all that is due 
to others, the means are fully equal to the indulgence. 
But the point to be first considered in every outlay, is 
not taste, but justice* Otherwise, luxury is fraud, and 
beauty a lie, nor can all the pomps of fashion and the 
splendors of art supply the charm which lies in the sim- 
ple grandeur of honest dealing. 

♦ Since then, to live frugally, is the task which the times 
have assigned to us, let us accept the lesson and com- 
press our wants, and call in our desires, and walk humbly, 
and owe no man anything but love. And while due heed 
is given that the first part of this precept be fulfilled, let 
not the other be forgotten. If the present, as we have 
seen, is a period when the observance of the former is 
particularly binding, it is one in which the healing influ- 
ence of the other is particularly grateful. Let us not only 
abstain from burdening ourselves and others with new 
and needless obligations, but let us also endeavour to 
bear each others' burdens already incurred, and thus to 
lighten the load of doubt and debt which weighs so 
heavily on the general mind. So shall each contribute 
something to redeem the time, till God shall restore to 
us the years which adversity hath laid waste, and the 
pressure of these days shall be remembered no more, for 
the plenty that is in the land. 



